Kuzya broke the trigger at the gun, Matchesk carries a box with him, Sits behind a bush - lure a grouse, He will attach a match to the seed - and it will break out!
(N. A. Nekrasov)
“… St. John's wort took the weapon from his friend's hands and cocked the trigger. There was gunpowder on the shelf, hardened like slag under the influence of time, dampness and pressure … This discovery puzzled the Indian, who was used to renewing the seed of his gun and examining it thoroughly every day. - White people are very careless, - said St. John's wort, shaking his head …"
(Fenimore Cooper, "St. John's Wort, or the First Warpath")
The history of firearms. In the previous article in this series, we talked about the emergence of the French battery-powered flintlock. But … when he was, as they say, in the prime of his years, he, nevertheless, already had a rival - a capsule lock, and almost immediately a weapon was created for it!
And it so happened that in 1799, the English chemist Edward Howard spoke to the Royal Society of London with the message that he had managed to create an explosive mixture of explosive mercury (discovered in 1774 by the royal court physician Boyen) and saltpeter, which he hastened to name "Howard's mercury." It was about using it instead of gunpowder. But it turned out that the mixture is dangerous: it easily explodes on impact, and the force of the explosion was such that the rifle barrels could not withstand it. But in small doses, instead of gunpowder, it could be used as a flammable substance on the seed shelf.
The fact is that the traditional flintlock still gave a lot of misfires. This was due to three circumstances at once: flint, flint (shelf cover) and a powder charge on it. The latter could become damp, caked, that is, it had to be regularly checked and updated. The surface of the flint could be damp at the time of the shot. The flint could wear off. But even if everything was in order, a shot from a flintlock rifle brought a number of inconveniences to the shooter: flash and smoke in the castle area covered the target, the shot itself stretched out in time, which ultimately made the shooting "wrong".
All this was known to the Reverend Alexander John Forsyth, priest of the parish of Belewy in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, who, firstly, was fond of chemistry, and secondly, hunting.
He began to work on the creation of a castle of a fundamentally new type and already in April 1807 received a patent - initially for the use of explosive mercury as an initiating charge, and then he created a lock of a new design, in which it was used.
And you can't deny him inventiveness. The Forsyth lock received a small cylinder, which was attached to the lock shelf in place of the powder shelf with a lid. Its shape resembled a perfume bottle, which is why Forsyth's castle began to be called "bottle", although Forsyth himself gave it the name "explosive castle".
In order to activate it, it was necessary to turn the bottle over. Then the powder of explosive mercury spilled onto the shelf, which then ignited when the trigger hit a special striker.
In 1809, the pastor even opened a company for the production of shotguns equipped with "bottle locks". However, in this case, he was not very successful. But his example prompted gunsmiths around the world to improve his castle.
There are three main modifications of Forsyth locks. In the first case, it was a device in the form of a perfume bottle, which was also a dispenser for an explosive mixture, which was ignited by hitting the trigger on the striker on the bottle. In the second, it was a sliding dispenser magazine connected by a pull rod to the trigger. In the third, the hammer blow with the striker occurred on the seed mixture granules in the ignition, where they fell from the store, fixed on a separate lever.
This is how balls appeared from a mixture of explosive mercury with wax, resin and drying oil. Often this mixture was glued into paper tape - similar to the piston tape for children's pistols (the development of Mainard, which was widely used in the United States during the Civil War). A copper foil tape was also invented, which, when the hammer was cocked, was automatically superimposed on the nest of the brandtube.
And already in 1814, the American Joshua Shaw came up with the idea of making caps from iron, and then from copper foil, filled with an explosive composition. Also between 1814 and 1816. gunsmiths from Great Britain, Joseph Menton and Joseph Egg, came up with copper caps that were put on the brand pipe, and this lock, on the development of which Menton worked a lot, began to be called the capsule.
Outwardly, the new castle looked very elegant. The trigger with two flint jaws was replaced by a trigger with a small recess in the front, which just contained the capsule put on the brand tube. This was done so that the fragments of the primer did not fly apart. There was no longer a need for a priming shelf, a flint cover, or a bending spring. All these details were missing. There was no seed hole either. Instead, a small-sized hollow tube made of hardened steel was screwed into the barrel from above to the right, through which the flame from the primer that had flared up from the impact passed into the barrel, and, by the way, that is why it was called a brand tube. The trigger spring and trigger device remained unchanged. That is, the cost of converting old flintlock rifles into capsule ones was minimal, which, naturally, was of great importance for the military, first of all.
Well, the very loading of the gun barrel did not change: it was necessary to bite off the cartridge and pour all its powder into the barrel, which made the fight of the gun significantly improved. Then a bullet with a wad or shot in a bag was driven into it with a ramrod. After that, the trigger was put on a safety platoon, retracted, while a capsule should be put on the brand tube.
Capsule guns appeared - hunting and combat (although the military at first believed that the soldiers would rub the caps, and then - that they would not be able to put them on with their coarse fingers!), Then pistols (including and even above all - dueling) and revolvers.
Forsythe's idea found application in the British army, although not immediately, and not quite in the way he proposed. In 1839, the first percussion rifles entered service with the British infantry. But instead of a complex "bottle" in the lock, they began to use the same copper cap of Menton and Egg. The government even decided to make some appropriate payments to Forsyth, since he was the holder of a patent for the very principle of ignition with an explosive composition, but due to legal delays, this was not done in connection with his death in 1843.
But be that as it may, a humble pastor from Belelvi made no less, but a revolution in military affairs. Now guns and pistols with capsule locks could shoot in the rain and fog, they practically did not give misfires, it became much more convenient to shoot from such weapons, and its striking power increased. Well, then the capsule was connected to the cartridge, and a unitary cartridge appeared, which we all know today.
